| About Alexander |
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William Alexander (1767–1816) was an English artist and born the son of a coachmaker in Maidstone, Kent, England. In 1784, he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy, and studied art under Pars , and subsequently Ibbetson. in 1792, he was appointed as one of the draughtsmen to the Macartney Embassy to China, where he assiduously applied himself to the study of his profession, and obtained the notice and approbation of Sir Joshua Reynolds. He proceeded with the earl of Macartney as far as Peking, where he made the drawings for the plates which accompany Sir George Staunton's account of that embassy; and afterwards published also The Costume of China, illustrated by ninety-six coloured engravings, (2 vols. 4to. 1805–1815.) The other principal works of this artist were Views of Headlands, Islands, etc., taken during the Voyage to China, 1798; the drawings from Mr.Daniells's Sketches, for Vancouver's Voyage to the North Pacific Ocean, and the descriptive plates to Mr. Barrow's Travels in China, and Voyage to Cochin China. |



About Alexander